Grisoft Rolls Out 2008 Version of Free AVG Anti-Virus

It’s one of the mysteries of the internet that I have never been able to get my head around – why anyone would want to pay through the nose for anti-virus software when there are perfectly good free alternatives out there. For the past five years, I have been using AVG from Grisoft and I have always been amazed at how great it is. The other day, they rolled out their 2008 free version and it blew my socks right off.

To give you an indication right off the bat of how good it is, a friend of mine has Norton Anti-Virus (for which he pays for) and it failed to detect a virus. On my recommendation, he downloaded AVG Anti-Virus 2008 – and it detected the virus immediately. My friend is now so disgusted with Norton that he has uninstalled it from his computer and he can’t stop raving about AVG 2008.

AVG does everything that a virus checker normally does – real time virus checking to begin with. When a virus enters your computer, AVG immediately flashes a warning sign on your screen with the location of the virus and it asks you what you want it to do. Obviously you want the virus moved immediately to the secure virus vault and once you make that choice, AVG moves away to do it and you can then continue with what you were doing before *cough* looking at naughty websites *cough*.

Secondly, AVG also scans your incoming and outgoing emails if you download your emails to an offline client such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. It quarantines and zaps suspicious attachments, especially if it has a file type “exe”.

So far, nothing to make you go “WOW!”. It’s all fairly standard stuff so far. So let’s see what Grisoft has done to the 2008 version that has impressed me personally :

First of all, they have radically re-designed the interface. The designers have really gone to work on it to make it aesthetically pleasing. I like companies that go that extra mile to make their products look nice.

Secondly, they have introduced some new features. I can now tell it to remove malicious tracking cookies from my computer. This was not available in its predecessor (at least not in the free version of AVG). What it also does is real-time monitoring of malicious tracking cookies whenever you visit a website. So when you visit a site and that site tries to put a bad cookie on your computer, AVG will instantly flash a warning sign on your screen asking you what you want to do. You are given the option of looking up the cookie in the online AVG database for more information before deciding whether to nuke the cookie or ignore it.

Also, when I make searches on Google, AVG tells me if the search results are safe to click on or if the pages have spyware in them.

The green arrow indicates a safe site (I presume a bad site is a red cross). My only complaint about this is that the checking process can take a while (thereby slowing down my searching) so I may eventually switch this feature off in the AVG options.

The next new feature is that you can control the speed of the virus checking process. You can choose between “slow scan”, “automatic scan” and “fast scan” :

But regardless of this feature, AVG 2008 overall is MUCH faster than its predecessor. You will notice a much improved scanning speed. It’s like the older AVG on steroids. I don’t know what the AVG engineers are feeding their virus scanner to make it go so fast but it must be good!

If you have the older AVG, I strongly recommend you upgrade (you will need to uninstall the older version of AVG first). If you don’t have AVG, I strongly recommend you uninstall whatever it is that you’re using and you start using AVG instead because this little beauty is the King of the Anti-Virus Jungle.

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Dunda

April 29, 2008

I only use Gmail for my mail, so I’ve been using AntiVir as it gets great reviews and its only flaw is lack of email scanning, which I don’t need. But this newest AVG version does seem tempting. Is it really that much better than AntiVir for what I need it for?

Mark O’Neill

April 29, 2008

Well I only use Gmail too so only my girlfriend (who uses Outlook) gets the full advantage of the email scanning. I haven’t used AntiVir so I can’t compare it but looking at what AVG gives me, I can’t possibly see how any other anti-virus app can top it.

pimpc

April 30, 2008

avg sucks it locked up my computer so it wouldnt do anything till i finally uninstalled the entire program.

mj12

June 13, 2008

I uninstalled v7.x and installed the latest version. My HP laptop ran so slow, it was like molasses in January. I got so disgusted with it, I uninstalled and reinstalled the older version.

mikeyj

May 12, 2009

I also had lockups with AVG’s 8 version, on Windows Vista w/ 1GB of ram, it slowed my pc down so much I had to use ALT Tab DELETE to get my task manager open, and then shut things down one by one, to see if it fixed anything and after closing AVG’s tools down my pc was back to normal. I think they might have a bug which zaps your memory, it had my pc running at like 80% usage.

Rebecca

August 23, 2008

I’ve downloaded and tried to install the AVG free8 and I get a pop up message that says that it has detected an outdated version of Roxio CD and DVD burner on my laptop and gives a link to update it as the old version has a bug that will interfere with installation. I have no idea how that would have gotten on my computer and when I searched the whole thing I couldn’t find anything called Roxio. I’d rather delete an unknown program than update it. Is this a scam?

Adi

April 29, 2008

Is it true that avg 8 installs the yahoo toolbar automatically and even if you uninstall avg the toolbar is bit hard to remove. I read it somewhere in the comments. I hate yahoo toolbar. Could you plz confirm this for me.

Mark O’Neill

April 29, 2008

It gives you the OPTION to install the Yahoo toolbar. It doesn’t force it on you. You just say no to the toolbar and it then installs AVG Anti-Virus without the toolbar.

Besides, if you do install the Yahoo toolbar, it’s very easy to remove. I have had the Yahoo toolbar before and it is simple to remove. You just go to the software section of your Windows start menu and remove it from there, as you would with any other piece of software. Yahoo is a very high profile responsible company – they can’t afford to push bloated spyware on people.

So I think whoever told you that the Yahoo toolbar is difficult to remove was misinformed.

Adi

April 29, 2008

Yeah that’s true. I just now installed the new version without any problem and it’s working pretty cool. One more thing that impressed me is that anti-spyware is integrated into AVG antivirus. Regarding the speed issue I have to check it out and give my view or a review.

Anon

“If you donâ€™t have AVG, I strongly recommend you uninstall whatever it is that youâ€™re using and you start using AVG instead because this little beauty is the King of the Anti-Virus Jungle.”

How can you recommend to uninstall one’s antivirus while you only reviewed UI and pretty minor features? It’s like buying a car for its furry steering wheel.

Mark O’Neill

April 29, 2008

For a start, I don’t believe that the features that I covered are minor. Not in the slightest.

Secondly, yes it’s true that I didn’t cover everything but that’s because on a blog like this, space is at a premium. If I covered everything, I’d be here all night and everyone would be reading and reading and reading…..

So as the writer, I have to condense it down to what I think are the most important facts to know and that’s what I gave you. But AVG does give a lot more. Based on everything I know about AVG, I made the recommendation to the readers that AVG is the best anti-virus software. But with space as tight as it is, I can’t write about every single feature here.

Sherri

April 29, 2008

Another question for you Mark: I used free AVG for years, then they had update problems for the free customers. It became such a hassle that I went through all the trusted recommendation sites/newsletters and switched to Avast. Avast is ‘ok’, but it’s not as easy to use as AVG was. How long have you been running AVG before upgrading, and are the update issues for non-professional clients resolved?

Thanks

Mark O’Neill

April 30, 2008

Update problems? What kind of problems?

I have used AVG (the free version) since 2003 and I have never encountered any problems whatsoever. AVG has saved my butt on MANY occasions, zapping viruses and killing email attachments (back in the days when I was using Outlook).

I am not aware of ANY problems whatsoever. If you could elaborate on the problems you encountered, that would be good, thanks.

Linnie

Claus Valca

April 29, 2008

I am a pretty staunch AVG Free fan so I was excited when AVG Free v8 final was released. Was great but as a sysadmin who cleans toolbars off our systems, I was a bit put off with seeing the AVG toolbar. To each their own.

I also (personally) don’t have much value for the SafeSearch/SafeScan component and wanted it off my system, as well as out all my browsers (in IE 8 it shows up as an Add-on feature, as it does for Firefox as well). Disabling it (the Linkscanner component) left my AVG system tray icon in an permanent error-warning state. Yuck!

Fortunately, a tipster pointed me to the way to do a “clean” install of AVG Free (from the command-line) which seems to totally leave off the toolbar and these other “features” like the Linkscanner from the get-go. It’s very easy for folks who want to nuke those components.

catester

I have used AVG Free since the Windows98 days — How long is that in Internet Years, anyway? — and have always been a big fan of it. I’ve recommended it to my clients and installed it for many of them.

Version 8.0 is a disappointment. It is prettier. I don’t find it to be any faster. It found stuff, all right — all of it false positives.

The anti-spyware component is difficult for the average user to turn off. OK, granted we might not want it to be easy for the average user to turn off. However, I already run — and pay for — CounterSpy for anti-spyware/malware/whathaveyou, and I like it very much. Of course, if you don’t figure out how the heck to turn off the AVG anti-spyware, and it decides to run when your CounterSpy is also running, it’s going to be difficult to get work done. I am not the average user. I’m good at this stuff. And I had a heck of a time finding all the places where it had to be turned off.

I absolutely hate the Link Check thing that puts icons all over my search results. I hate it. And if you turn off that — or any — component, the systray icon warns you all the time that your computer may be at risk.

Maybe there’s a way to turn that damn warning off, too, but I hated this product so much that I uninstalled it and reinstalled ugly old version 7.5, which works good and lasts a long time.

In fairness, if someone doesn’t have anti-virus and anti-spyware already installed, and they don’t mind notifications popping up out of the systray all the time, and they don’t mind someone holding their hands when they search, then this is a pretty good choice. Especially if all they care about is the user interface, because that IS nice. It’s kind of…blue.

So, now that 8.0 is out, I guess 7.5 will soon stop being updated, and I’ll have to move along to something else.

Anon

April 30, 2008

“For a start, I donâ€™t believe that the features that I covered are minor. Not in the slightest.”

Well, the prime objective of an antivirus is to protect your PC from viruses. You start with the redisgned UI, then you talk about cookies (fairly innocuous threat – would be last on my list), and you go on with that google seach checking and the setting of the scan speed. That’s what I call minor features when it comes to security.

I don’t mean to disparage your article or bother you, and I actually read your pages regularly – but you should acknowledge somewhere in your text that you reviewed AVG from the “user experience” perspective, and that you did not cover how the product can cope with threats “in real life”. In other words, this is not a technical review, and that’s why I shook my head when you talked about uninstalling our antivirus for AVG. I mean, if I told you to change lawyer for mine, wouldn’t you expect some kind of facts and track record, beyond my mere enthusiasm on how professional she looks to me?

Mark O’Neill

April 30, 2008

Well sorry but I don’t have the facts to hand about how AVG waterboards the crap (or not) out of a virus when it gets a hold of one!! :-) I can only go over the features and nothing else!

And contrary to what people seem to think here, I am not obsessed with the look of the user interface. I merely commented on how nice it looked. Nothing more.

Mike

April 30, 2008

You really don’t know the worth of a Antivirus program until you get a virus. I used AVG 7.0 for a long time until if failed me and let a virus into a clients network. AVG could not clean the virus. NOD32 killed it and two others that AVG missed.

I pay for NOD32 and would never go back to AVG. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for. NOD32 has never let a virus through in the wild and they’re the only product that can make that claim. NOD32 also has the smallest memory footprint and the fastest scan times.

Bob

April 30, 2008

AVG may be good, I’ve used it for years now, but this thing with the Yahoo toolbar is unexcusable. I’ve installed AVG8, and IT HAS NOT asked if I wanted the booldy toolbar, it installed it right away.
Even after I uninstalled and reinstalled AVG8, the toolbar was still there, both in IE7 AND Firefox.
To get rid of it, I had to use ToolbarCop, and in Firefox I had to deactivate it through “add-ons” interface (just deactivate, as the ‘unistall’ option is greyed out).
I may be too radical, but I consider ANY unwanted software spyware. Toolbar like this one tend to be extremely intrusive, and usually lack of a unistall option.
Guess it’s time to give AVAST a real test.

Mark O’Neill

April 30, 2008

well then we must be using different versions of AVG because when I installed AVG, it gave me a choice of “do you want to install the Yahoo toolbar?”. I said no and it didn’t install it. Period!

You make it sound as if AVG kicked down your front door and rammed the toolbar down your throat while holding a gun to your head!

Besides, the toolbar (if it is on your computer) is easily removed by going to the software section of your Windows start menu and removing it like any other piece of software, and then using the crapcleaner software to remove any lingering traces.

I wish you would stop over-reacting!

Bob

May 2, 2008

Hey, no need to take it personally.
Uninstalling the toolbar wasn’t that easy as you said, ’cause it simply didn’t appear either in Start | All Programs or through Control Panel’s software management. After all, it still sits in my Firefox add-ons without the uninstall button.

I just think that free software is no excuse for forcing users to accept something they don’t want, or worse, they don’t know about.

And besides, if the thing is legit as they claim, why isn’t there a simple and straightforward “uninstall” feature for the toolbar? I may be an over-average user, but I’m no computer pro, and it’s not easy for me to poke around command lines or hidden tweaks to unistall software.

All this started badly with the annoying pop-ups, while I was still using version 7.5. I can’t say if we are using different AVG versions ( I’ve dowloaded from their site), but surely our windows version is different, as I’m using XPsp2 in brazilian portuguese. Don’t think that’s the problem, though.

English may not be my native language, but I’m sure AVG installer did not ask me if I wanted the toolbar.

Anon

April 30, 2008

“I can only go over the features and nothing else!”

Fair enough, but the main feature is how well you are protected, and you need to be willing to “torture test” the antivirus to find out how it scores. This takes time, and it requires a pretty good understanding of how the security programs work. Needless to say, it’s better done by security experts, whose job is partly to deal with these things.

It does not mean you cannot review other “features”, but you should let the reader know that your testing is nowhere near complete, and that they should not base their choice on it only. Now, I’m off the soapbox.

Ashutosh Mishra

April 30, 2008

It would be so much better without the antispyware! I like to use separate security tools (Win. Defender for anti-spy) and I just can’t find a way of turning off the AVG anti-spy. Can it be done, or does it stick permanently to the virus engine? :'(

Ben

Jo Ann K.

May 1, 2008

I’ve had AVG for over 6 months and just downloaded their new version. A few days later I was on my MSN Verizon DSL (not Internet Explorer) and clicked on my Mail to open up my inbox. All of a sudden Internet Explorer opened up and I was bombarded with over 17 Windows/Screens on Internet Explorer – they just kept popping up until I did a hard shutdown. I figured someone broke through AVG with a virus to do this to my email. Anyone have any thoughts on this.

Sill

May 2, 2008

I had BOUGHT the full 7.5 suite and wasn’t crazy about the slow scanning and other problems, but they allowed me to upgrade to 8.0, which does run faster and much less obtrusively than 7.5… which I was on the verge of dumping, paid-for or not.

(I was NOT offered an option of getting rid of that Yahoo toolbar and had to kill it manually. The AVG icon constantly nags that I’m less than fully protected, but I’m used to this particular nanny yelling at me.)

My problem is that I can’t shut the AV component off! I need to, in order to download a font that got corrupted, which (I’ve had to re-DL it before) simply cannot come through an AV program. I go to Advanced > Resident Shield and untick the box and hit Apply and OK, and AVG goes back to its main interface, which informs me that my AV is up and running, though when I go back to the Resident Shield box to check, it remains unticked. I find this enormously frustrating, and have lost the use of a program until I can get the correct font back.

There needs to be simple access to a temporary shutdown, or even an advanced option that, y’know, actually works. I can’t even shut down any AVG processes through Task Manager — well, I can, and they immediately relaunch, like zombies. It’s like having the world’s meanest babysitter. Would it KILL them to allow me to take an utterly reasonable risk?

Mike Korkowski

May 9, 2008

AVG 8.0 SUCKS. It takes far too long to scan, even in thefast scan mode. I don’t care about spyware dectors, I have my own. The program, old and new but new is worse,uses up resources and has perfotrmance hits ups to 100% off and on. I have been a loyal AVG user for a LONG time and am quite familiar with the program but in this case a more polished interface is snynonymous with Windows Vista-looks good and runs bad. Its all about speed-PERIOD. Do the job fast so we can get on with our lives. True I have a lot of files, but many do. I am very disappointed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dean

August 16, 2008

im sitting here reading all these comments about AVG and how “bad” it is,if people would put as much effort into looking for alternative software,and putting that in a post,i think we would have a LOT more time to “get on with our lives” as it was said by one person.
but then i think,if that was the case,we wouldn’t have these little gatherings on a site like this,where we could read about peoples issues with things they get for free,and how they are so disappointed with them,well here’s an idea,MAKE ONE YOURSELF!!!!!,and lets see what you can come up with,then give it to us FOR FREE,and we’ll find something negative about it,and post it for everyone else to see how bad your program really is,you know,the one you spent months and months trying to make work,so you could improve online time for the masses,the one you’re making FOR FREE,in your own time,with no pay,or is that just to much to ask for?.

Mark

MaxwellT

June 11, 2008

This version did not work well with my dial up connection, Windows XP & Windows IE7. IE7 would no longer open reliably after connecting to the internet – problem assumed to be due to whatever AVG is doing to IE7 as it opens…

Anon

June 12, 2008

I’ve been using AVG 6, 7, & 7.5 for numerous years, on a very wide range
of systems. Each was a noticeable improvement over the previous until —

AVG 8.0 is teh suck… Let me count the ways:

User friendly? When I disable chosen components, system tray icon remains
in permanent error state, UNLIKE AVG 7.5 and earlier. Not an improvement
in the least. zOMG your computer is now AT RISK!! Sheesh.

Installing toolbars EVEN OPTIONALLY by an AV program is inexcusable. Bah.

Anti-phish Linkscanner is bloatware and can only be avoided with a
long command-line installation. Meh.

Shell scanner is no longer quick and unobtrusive. Oy!

New silly message window an improvement? No way!! Feh.

Obviously, when Intel bought into AVG, they wanted to make AVG a more
resource-hungry application so users would want new machines.

doruf

June 22, 2008

I was very happy with AVG 7 and I was happier when I got the news about AVG 8. It is nicer in presentation and probably has a lot of features but I cannot use them because each time when it is programmed to make updating the contact with the update server fails. I have seen in FAQ that this is a problem encountered by many and I addopted the advises given there but with no success. I uninstalled and re installed again, it works one or two day and then fails again. I could not get any support from Grisoft since it is the free version and since I am unprotected, I decided to look after another AV.
Can anyone help with this?

Robert

July 5, 2008

I love AVG free as it does everything i want it too. I only have one problem that i have to turn AVG off to recieve my emails as outlook express won’t let them in for some reason. I also run zone alarm as well but mail safe is turned of on that. Anyone who may know how to solve my email problem please post here . Many Thanks Robert

Darcy Hunter

August 15, 2008

I bought 2 Licence #’s for avg 8.0.162. One for myself, the other for my wife. I have had endless trouble trying to update; avg keeps giving me an error saying there is not enough memory. I have 182 gb free on my hard drive and 2 gb of ram. I also have 2046 MB of virtual memory. I have been sending countless emails to AVG tech support which are simply ignored. I am warning all my friends about this. If The tech support cannot answer any of my emails for several days I would think it reasonable to assume they are so busy and back logged with countless problems from others, that there are major flaws with this program.

Dot

October 9, 2008

I have downloaded AVG version 8 (free) to my computer. I keep getting a message from AVP to say that 171 problems have been detected on my computer and that I need to register and pay to get a “key” number to eradicate these potentially harmful problems from my pc?? Do I need to buy the product to clear these problems…even though the download AVG free..is free??

Carol

November 6, 2008

I downloaded the free version. It worked for one week and then wouldn’t update. I foolishly bought the 8.0 version. It worked for one week and now won’t update. There is no number to call to get help. The program doesn’t work and is a waste of time and money. Does anybody recommend a good anti virus. I spent $40 for this one for 2 years protection and got one week. There must be a less expensive product out there that offers support also.

Programmeroo

January 4, 2009

I used the free version of AVG for a couple years. Recently my PC was attacked by a trojan horse. AVG could not remove it. I spent hours searching for the culprit in my registry and was able to remove it myself. I then decided maybe the full version would provide better protection.
What a nightmare! The firewall hangs my browser, Outlook, and does not update. The AVG does not disable the Windows firewall. The link-scanner hangs Internet Explorer.

The support has been terrible. They sent me some diagnostic programs to run and have gone away for two weeks to try and figure it out. I would expect better support for such a technical product.

Mary nettles

January 10, 2009

Several months back I installed the Free 8.0 antivirus and now in just the last tewo weeks I have an icom on the bottom right hand side and when you click on it it says, Invalid update control CTF file. Can you help me with this?

Mark O’Neill

January 11, 2009

I’m not sure what this error message means. However I have a contact at AVG and I will email them and ask them. Please be patient and I will get back to you with a response.

tips photo

sarveswaran r

Cheezwhiz

February 26, 2009

I’ve been using the free version of AVG practically my entire life and I don’t understand why everyone despises it. When I switched from version 7.5 to 8.0, my only problem was that it took so long to uninstall 7.5 and install 8.0. The scans aren’t too fast either, but that’s not important to me. It caught all the crap my sister stuck on what is now my computer and removed it. (Except removing Purityscan, but that required the help of those online tech people. Yay!) I can see multiple users complaining about AVG missing a virus/trojan horse. Go get another antivirus program. Do you really rely on only one? There are PLENTY of free programs actually worth keeping.

Yvonne Hogg

Ann Lee

March 26, 2009

I had AVG Free 8.5 now for two days now and every time I turn on my computer and I right click the tray icon everything is grayed out except EXIT. When I use my desktop icon to open AVG all the components are gone. Yesterday I just ran the install file again and a repair option came up and fixed it. Now today the components are all gone again. Has this happened to anyone else? Before this I had Windows Live One Care. (I didn’t like it.)

Ellira

April 15, 2009

Cheezwhiz, it’s actually silly to have more than one AV program on your system, as they compete with each other and get confused. No tech would recommend multiple programs.

I, unfortunately, removed AVG 8 after happily using AVG 7.5 for several years. The program took far too long to update (and my system was virtually unusable while it did this as it was so memory-intensive), and after every update wanted to restart my computer. As the update runs as soon as I start my computer, that’s a ridiculous waste of of my time. No one wants to boot their computer twice just to get started. I’ve since been using Avast, and had no problems with it–it’s much smoother-running on my poor system, makes updates efficiently to both the program and the virus database, and removes things from infected drives very well. All in all, I think AVG shot themselves in the foot with this one. I’m sure it catches viruses fine, but if something makes your system unusable … you’re not going to get viruses, are you?

×¦×ž×™×’×™×

September 30, 2009

Unbearably slow, ties up system resources, frequently locks up (crashing outlook 2003) when CPU usage reaches 100% (dual core AMD w 2 MB ram), incompatible with numerous programs (Carbonite, Sana Security, Google Desktop, Personal Info keeper, etc.) mediocre tech support (you must fill in a web form and then wait at least 3-4 days for a response, that so far has been worthless). No phone support despite 24/7 tech support claim. This program was not ready for release. I was ripped off and they refuse to fix my problems on a timely basis or refund my money

Antivirus

October 26, 2009

The benefits I have found from AVG are numerous. It does not slow down my computer’s booting speed, disk speed, or internet speed. It rarely finds false positives in my system. When I had Norton, I was often deceived by hackers sending me pop ups that I thought were from Norton, but which were actually viruses, Trojans, and rootkits meant to search my computer for valuable information. I was deceived by the pop ups because their interfaces looked so similar to the ones used by Norton. AVG has a distinct interface that is likely too laborsome for hackers to copy.